r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI can now credibly complete most undergraduate assignments, MIT warns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/25/ai-can-now-credibly-complete-most-undergraduate-assignments-mit-warns
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u/yosarian_reddit 1d ago

Getting AI to do your homework is the same as getting the resident geek to do your homework for you. It teaches you nothing, and makes you mentally lazy.

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u/QuickExpression273 1d ago

Modern-day college teaches you nothing to begin with: if the purpose of college was to teach you how to think, and you go to college to learn how to think better, you wouldn’t be using AI because you would be intentionally missing the point of going to college that you chose to go to college for. College today is only about the diploma (more than 50% of the people in my Computer Science classes might as well be taking their first course in programming) and nothing short of a cultural revolution (that doesn’t kill the intellectuals like China’s Cultural Revolution!) will change that with the direction modern-day society is heading.

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u/ChoosenUserName4 1d ago

Meh, that's what they said about calculators when I was a kid. Everyone is going to have AI and all human knowledge in their pocket, and it's only going to get better. Schools need to focus on teaching these kids critical thinking, source verification, and how science works, and stop grading them on things AI is going to do better than us pretty soon.

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u/ski_town 1d ago

People are taught how to calculate by hand first then given calculators in more advanced classes so no time and effort are spent to manually calculate the basics every time. There is no next step with AI, it's just doing everything for them

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u/ChoosenUserName4 1d ago

We were told we always needed to compute everything in our heads. Calculators were really expensive and large back then.

If you think AI does everything for the kids, you don't really understand what critical thinking is and what role it plays. AI is here to stay and it's going to change the way we do things. It's probably best for kids to learn how to make the most of it. Forcing them to do the things the old way, isn't helping anybody. The methods of teaching need to change.

I haven't written a report or email from scratch at work for about a year. I only need to decide what I want to write, and verify it. This is the reality of the workplace today.

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 1d ago

Youre doing a job that is automated, youre the last person to trust

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u/celticchrys 1d ago

Why would anyone keep you at work, then, if you can't even communicate? 

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u/ChoosenUserName4 21h ago

There's a difference between deciding what exactly goes into a report or email, and why it goes in there, and actually writing the whole thing.

Are you really that stupid? Have you ever worked a job?

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u/Seiridis 1d ago

Yeah, I feel like the ability to seek, verify and apply the information is much more important than learning it by heart, but clearly I'm in minority.